“Easy, Vis. We kill a god.”
The light consumes us.
II
EMISSA SITS BY MY SIDE AS I LIE THERE. SHE STROKES MYcheek absently, murmuring gentle reassurances, and then green eyes dancing as she laughs at something I’ve said, though I immediately cannot remember what it was. Her long dark hair falling over her smiling face. Falling over mine as she kisses me. Never once letting my attention wander.
I know, distantly, that there is something wrong with my arm. I feel its ache through her soothing. But as long as she is here with me, it is bearable. As long as she is with me, I will be alright.
My eyes open once and there’s blue sky. They open again and there are bright stars in a moonless night. I hear waves. The creak of wood, the splash of oars.
Those waking moments, my shoulder afire, all I want is to close my eyes again. I know she is a dream. I know she is not real. I still need her back.
Sometimes, just the fiction is comfort enough.
But eventually, as if a warm blanket has been stolen away, I wake.
Clarity comes slowly. I can’t find the energy to pry my eyes open straight away. There’s a rhythmic rocking, the smell of salt, the snap of a sail, and the gentle slosh of water all around. Damp boards at my back, and a spring breeze ruffling my tunic. Not aboard a large ship, then, else surely I’d be belowdecks.
My drowsing mind strains to catch up. There was that circle of bronze blades, the words carved on my arm. The blocked exit back to the Labyrinth, and then …
And then that strange white rotunda amidst the snow, high on the mountaintop, flickering in and out of reality.
Blood.
My left arm gone.
I exhale shakily. Grief in the act. I don’t have to look to confirm it—the pain there is more than enough—but I prise my eyes open anyway. Squint against the minor agony of the sunlight, twist my head away from the cloud-dotted blue above.
The sodden bandage around the short stump jutting from my shoulder is more black than red. My throat closes at the sight.
“Tá sé ina dhúiseacht.” The growl comes from above my head. I swallow my anguish and try to shift, managing enough to see the form of a man a few paces away. The stranger responds to my movement, coming to crouch beside me. He’s muscled. Clad only in simple breeches. A mass of intricate whorls and patterns cover his torso, startlingly blue against pale skin. “Bheith fós.” He’s addressing me, this time. His tone’s not pleased, but it doesn’t seem overtly aggressive, either.
I moan and shake my head, trying to indicate I don’t understand. I go to speak, but only a dry rasp comes out.
The man disappears briefly, returning with a waterskin and holding it to my lips. I drink too eagerly, choking on the first gulp.
“Mall.” Gruff, but insistent. “Ól go mall.”
I nod, getting the gist, letting the water trickle down my throat this time. It helps. I lie there until I can pluck up the resolve to sit.
The big man growls as soon as I awkwardly move, using a single finger on my chest to force me back down. “Bheith fós.”
I scowl, though there’s more irritation than malice in his act. I’m not bound. I don’t think I’m a prisoner. “I don’t know what you’re saying.” A blank look in response. “Dydw i ddim yn deall?” I venture, trying Cymrian, which to my ear sounds the closest language I know to whatever this man is speaking. It doesn’t change his expression.
Before long I’ve dredged up enough wit to croak out the same thing in four other languages—including Vetusian, which I have the vaguest sense of having heard in that strange rotunda, though I can recall nothing of what was actually said to me through the shocked agony of those awful moments. None of it seems to make a dent, regardless. The stranger proffers the waterskin again. I accept gratefully. That, along with a sharp sea breeze, banishes any lingering mental fog. My breathing eases.
I move to rise again and this time, when the man goes to restrain me, I growl in response. He pulls his hand back in surprise, then barks a laugh and backs off.
After a brief, clumsy struggle into a seated position with my back propped up against the hull, I take stock. Our boat is small: barely twenty feet long and crudely constructed, just a single mast with a square white sail in its centre. Aside from the man I’ve been attempting to converse with, there are only two other occupants.
The second man watches me curiously from the tiller but offers no greeting. Like the first, he looks wild. Fierce. The same long red hair that seems caked with some sort of white substance, allowing them both to spike it high and back, stiff despite the breeze. The same swirling, elaborate blue marks on his naked torso, too. The symbols remind me more than a little of Eidhin’s tattoos, but these are thick and bright. Painted on.
The third stranger reclines near him at the other end of the boat, asleep. Across his chest lies a staff. Wooden and gnarled, intricate carvings that divide it into several distinct sections covering the rowan. Hard to see his features from this angle, but he’s swathed in a white cloak. I have a hazy memory of someone on the mountaintop, just before I passed out, wearing the same. That can’t be a coincidence.
I point. “I need to speak with him.” My vision swims; the staff seems almost like it’s glowing. I shouldn’t have sat up.
“Fos.” Tone and frowning demeanour indicate the answer well enough. I hazard an attempt to stand and immediately collapse back again, to the laughter of the two men. It’s an ugly sound, no sympathy in it.
